


Grow Old With Me

by Jmetropolis



Series: You're the One [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Babies, Birthday, Birthday Fluff, Birthday Presents, Doctor Midorima, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Family, Family Fluff, Fluff, Future Fic, Healthy Relationships, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Parenthood, Sexual Content, Tanabata, high spec husband, special delivery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:19:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jmetropolis/pseuds/Jmetropolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's July 7th, but Midorima's not the only one celebrating a birthday and Takao is determined to make his Shin-chan's day special.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grow Old With Me

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part two of a series. You don't have to read the first part, "Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These," to understand it, but please do.

Takao smirked as he glanced at the affectionate nickname flashing on the large screen of his dashboard. He answered the call using the car's speaker function and as expected the backseat occupants pipped up immediately upon hearing their father's voice through the stereo system.

"Happy Birthday Daddy!" Keiko-chan squealed delightedly while Kichiro followed her lead offering his father birthday salutations on this, the first day of Tanabata in his own monosyllabic babbles. The amount of excitement his children could conjure up in mere seconds in response to either parent always made Takao smile.

Midorima was invariably the first to leave their cozy, not-so-little roost in the mornings, even though the kids had ensured that Kazunari would not be sleeping in for the foreseeable future. No one, not even the tots, woke up as early as Shintarō did to go to work in the mornings. And so this was the first opportunity any of them had to greet him.

Takao had expected Shin-chan home early. The doctor had a few post-op patients to check up on, but he had purposely cleared his calendar otherwise and had scheduled no surgeries today. Even so, Kazunari hadn't expected Midorima to be done this early. As it was, he and the kids weren't even home yet. They were on their way to Mura-chin's bakery to pick up a special order of shiruko-flavored pastries for tonight's fête.

It was Shintarō's first birthday with the children. Last year Takao had thrown a lavish dinner party at their penthouse apartment inviting the Miracles and their significant others. This year the birthday boy had adamantly requested ( _I mean it, Takao_ ) no parties. And for reasons Takao would rather not discuss (ever), absolutely, positively _no_ selfies.

Instead, his Shin-chan wanted to enjoy a quiet, noncombustible early evening dinner at home with those nearest and dearest to him -- his little sister, his spouse, and his children -- before the kids were shipped off to Takao's parents for the night. Midorima's own parents were on an extended bengalese river cruise which made things easier for everyone involved.

Takao couldn't say he blamed Shin-chan for shying away from another party, what with last year's small kitchen fire due and owing to a faulty blowtorch missing the creme brûlée ramekins and going straight for the highly flammable pile of very expensive natural cocoon silk table linens Takao had borrowed from his posh mother-in-law for just the occasion, an ill-advised bet between Aomine and Kagami in which not only had there been no winners, but the tatami had to be replaced, Kise's disastrous fanclub-contest-winner-turned-date (read: stalker), and Kuroko being accidentally locked out on the balcony escaping everyone's attention for most of the evening until it was time for all of their guests to leave. Even then, it had taken all of them the better part of an hour to find the Phantom Passer passed out amongst the potted ficus thanks to an early July heatwave. There was also the bit about a thoroughly plastered Akashi getting his hands on what else, a pair of scissors and threatening to cut off Mura-chin's hair if only the giant would bend down so that the vertically challenged little emperor could reach the lavender tresses. Okay. That part Kazunari had thoroughly enjoyed. It had almost made the whole calamity worth it. _Almost_.

"Shin-chan. You're done already?"

"Momoi's in labor --"

"Aunt Momoi!!!" Keiko gasped in excitement, interrupting her father.

"For real this time --"

"I wanna see Aunt Momoi," their daughter chimed in to no one's surprise.

Takao took Shin-chan off speaker phone to the complaints of a certain young miss, otherwise they'd never finish the conversation.

Momoi had been in "labor" a lot lately. Part of it was first-time mom jitters so that every bit of colic or indigestion felt like a contraction. The other, larger part, was due to an overeager law enforcement officer who watched with increased anticipation as his wife's impending due date approached and then passed them on the calendar. Momoi was now officially two weeks overdue. Needless to say there was a police cruiser, sirens blaring making nearly nightly visits to the E.R.

"Okay. I'll call the florist. What room is she in?"

"Her obstetrician's stuck in traffic."

"What --"

"I may be a little delayed, okay?"

"Sure, Shin-chan," Takao responded a bit confused.

Midorima was decidedly _not_ an obstetrician. In fact, Takao could say with absolute certainty that his Shin-chan wanted nothing to do with the female anatomy. Still, one did not graduate first in their class from medical school without excelling in all of one's courses. So it only made sense that Shintarō would want to stay with his understandably nervous, childhood friend and former team manager until her doctor extricated himself from Tokyo's notorious gridlock and got to the hospital.

Kazunari just hoped Midorima didn't stay too late.

###

The phone buzzed in Takao's hands. He had been so anxious awaiting Shin-chan's call that he hadn't bothered putting it down when he and the kids got home.

The children were preoccupied hanging wishes on the lower branches of a potted bamboo tree in the living room and the floor was littered with paper magpies in celebration of the festival of stars. Earlier, Takao had folded all the origami and written the wishes for them on small strips of colored paper for Tanabata.

"How's she doing?" he asked in lieu of greeting. He was sitting crossed-legged on the tatami decorating the taller branches of their wishing tree surrounded by helium balloons and streamers, a pointed party hat atop his head waiting impatiently for the guest of honor.

"She's seven centimeters dilated last time I checked."

" _Ugh_. That's not what I meant, Shin-chan," he said, trying to scrub that horrifying mental image out of his head. "And how's Aomine holding up?"

"He's out like a light."

"Bwha! Is Shin-chan making a joke?" Takao teased referring to the power forward's old, Teiko-era nickname.

"You know what I mean," he responded sounding exasperated. "He took one look at his wife's 'progress' and passed out cold. We kept stepping over him, until one of the nurses called a burly orderly to move him out of the way. He's on the stretcher behind me. Eventually, someone's going to have to fetch some smelling salts so he can come to. But for now, it's nice just to have him out of the way."

"You're kidding." Takao had imagined brash, boorish Aomine in his police uniform spouting something along the lines of, _The only one who can deliver my baby is me._

Instead, the power forward was knocked out on a gurney in the corner of the room, cast aside like yesterday's laundry. The juxtaposition of those two images was too much for the hawkeye and he had to bite his lip so he wouldn't laugh.

"Of course not. I never kid," Midorima responded in an affronted huff. And then, he took on a softer tone, "I can't leave here until her obstetrician gets here. She's too far along. And even if she wasn't, I can't --"

"No. I understand, Shin-chan." Takao replied gloomily.

"I think you'd better go on ahead without me, Kazu."

Takao considered the possibility of just dropping the children off at his parents now and meeting up with Shintarō at the hospital afterwards. He considered it, but he just couldn't do it.

Kazunari was uncharacteristically downtrodden as he called his sister-in-law to cancel dinner. While he was unquestionably happy for his friends and was as ecstatic as anyone to welcome the new addition, he just wished it had happened on any other day.

He had built Shin-chan's birthday up to the children for weeks. So much so that Keiko-chan would ask him every morning when she woke him up if it was daddy's birthday yet. The three of them had baked Shin-chan a cake together that afternoon. And after that, they had even made him a card -- a chaotic collision of stickers and markers and crayons on a folded over piece of poster board. He had helped Keiko-chan trace her name in pink crayon, of course, and had forged Kicki-chan's signature (he was such an agreeable little chap that Takao was sure he wouldn't object, being otherwise indisposed due to his regularly scheduled mid-afternoon nap).

Even now, his birthday present to Shintarō was drying on a table in the balcony.

The children had put in so much work into their father's birthday, that Takao didn't have the heart to cancel the kids' portion of today's programming.

If Shin-chan couldn't come to the shindig. The shindig would come to Shin-chan.

###

Takao knew Shintarō was with Momoi and he also knew where the maternity ward was. But he wasn't insane. He wasn't about to walk into that stressful situation with two small children in tow.

Instead, he and the children patiently waited for Shin-chan in the green-haired doctor's office. Or at least Takao waited patiently, the children were another story.

"Papa, when is daddy coming?" Keiko-chan asked for the umpteenth time. He had brought a coloring book and crayons for her, but that only kept her attention for so long. When their family unit had consisted only of two, Takao had been labeled the impatient one, but now that it had doubled in size he'd passed the mantle on to their daughter. Kazunari had the fortitude of a tortoise by comparison.

Explaining the concept of time to child who was just learning to count was a lost cause. He could tell her 30 minutes or three hours and she still wouldn't know the difference.

Instead he told her "soon" and hoped he was right.

Although Shintarō's office was meticulously organized, he was almost as bad as Takao when it came to the number of family photos on his credenza. Takao was the family photographer. Being the more outwardly sentimental of the two, he documented everything. But Midorima had stealthily snagged a lot of the pictures Takao had printed or enlarged and reclaimed them as his own.

Unlike the ones in Takao's messy home office that were for the most part pinned haphazardly to an old cork board or taped to the drywall so that they were at eye level when he worked at his desk, these were all encased in smart, expensive-looking frames that followed the same eclectic-though-elegant style in their apartment, their decorator certainly had a theme going.

There were plenty of selfies of the four of them, some formal portraits from their wedding, and a few professional ones from a photo shoot they had booked a little over nine months ago when they had first brought the children home. And there it was. Pixelated poof that their children were doing to them what children everywhere had done to their parents since time immemorial, growing up way too fast.

Keiko-chan looked more baby-like then. Her hair had grown so long and the cheeks Takao thought were so adorably chubby had been even chubbier back then. Kichiro looked so tiny in those pictures it was hard to believe he was the same little tyke who was walking now and sputtering random words, and was on the cusp of sprouting his very first chomper. At least that's what all that drooling, trouble sleeping, and putting everything in his mouth were the harbingers of according to the parenting books.

Kazunari didn't consult the multitude of parental reference guides that Midorima had stocked in lieu of Takao's trashy novels in their built in bookshelves at home like a grocer trying to entice customers to try a new product by creating an eye-catching display. Not like Shin-chan, who read them with the frequency of religious texts and consulted them like oracles. But Takao did thumb through them occasionally, when he felt out of his element.

Midorima had the kind of desk you'd expect from a physician -- sophisticated, highly polished, and large enough to dominate the entire room. It was a lot like the man himself. If it were possible for a piece of furniture to judge people, Takao would say Midorima's desk was very judgy.

It even had a 3-D replica of the human brain. The four lobes were meant to be taken apart to show the interior regions hidden by the cortex, except Takao had broken it the first time he visited Shin-chan in his new office. So now the model organ tended to fall apart with or without human interaction.

The funny thing was that the children had a better idea of what Midorima did for a living than what Takao did. Well, Keiko-chan did anyway. Kichiro was too young to have much of an idea of anything, other than mealtimes. He had committed those to memory.

Describing the intricacies of neurosurgery to a child was impossible, of course. Takao, who was clearly not a child no matter how many times Shin-chan called him one, didn't even understand all of it himself. But the children did go to regularly scheduled checkups at their thoroughly vetted pediatrician's office. Keiko-chan knew that the man wore a white coat and silly green pajamas like daddy sometimes wore when he came home from work, that it was the one place where it was okay for her to stick out her tongue, and that she got a piece of candy at the end of every visit.

Although Shintarō's day-to-day occupational tasks were nothing like a pediatrician's, this conceptual understanding was close enough. But because Takao worked from home and wrote most of his sports stories during nap time and after bedtime, he wasn't sure his daughter even understood that he had a job.

"Well?" Takao asked when a beleaguered looking Midorima finally walked into his office. Keiko-chan wasted no time clamping herself onto her father's long leg and Kichiro followed suit.

"It's a boy," he answered as his picked up his own children. "Ten pounds, 12 ounces."

"Yowza" Takao whistled. "That's like delivering a bowling ball." Takao had never once wanted to be a girl, least of all now.

"Tell me about it," he responded as he adjusted his children in place on either side of him, giving each of them a kiss hello on the cheek before leaning forward to peck Kazunari on the lips.

"How are they doing?"

"Mother and baby are fine. Aomine is a blubbering mess."

Takao laughed as he tried to picture the brawny, bad boy cop reduced to tears. But he knew as well as anybody that having children changes everyone. He just had to look up to see his normally stoic, undemonstrative husband blowing raspberries on a rounded tummy, a delicious sliver of exposed skin peeking beneath the hem of a tiny mint green polo shirt, making their son giggle.

They would visit the happy family tomorrow, bringing flowers and a gift and properly welcoming the mini-miracle, but for now his own family had a birthday to celebrate.

Kazunari had packed Shintarō's birthday cake in the same cardboard box the pastries had come in. The advantage of it being a homemade cake and not one of the fancy ones from Mura-chin's bakery was it didn't look any worse for wear for having been transported in the front passenger seat of Takao's car. In fact, the incidental jostling it had received on its journey to Shin-chan's office could've only improved its appearance.

The cake itself was a three-tiered, chocolate smeared culinary disaster unintentionally set at an angle, not unlike a certain leaning tower. It was saturated in a rainbow of sprinkles -- almost as if its creators happened to really enjoy using the shakers -- with a heavy dosing of green sprinkles at it's summit, because Keiko had belatedly declared that "daddy was green on top" and who was Takao to argue with such simple truths.

Shin-chan was getting to that age where there were just too many candles to count and given last year's incendiary incident, Takao thought it was best to just use one candle to represent all the years of his life.

After the children sang happy birthday to their father during which the practiced lyrics were more or less botched it was time to blow out the lone candle.

Takao had tried to explain to Keiko-chan that because it was daddy's birthday, only daddy got to blow out the candles. He even tried to remind her that when it had been her birthday a few months ago, she hadn't wanted anyone else to blow out her candles.

But Keiko-chan insisted daddy needed her help blowing out his birthday candle, never mind that Shintarō had made it three decades managing just fine.

So Takao redirected his focus on teaching Kichiro how to blow out a candle so that he too could help his father with this arduous task. Except Kichiro kept sucking air in instead of blowing air out.

"You're lucky you're cute," Kazunari joked poking his son on his protruding belly to a delicious peal of laughter.

Takao had one of the nurses take a picture of the four of them before sharing the cake with the staff. And even though it was impossible to get both children to look at the camera lens at the same time, he knew when he saw the photo in the viewfinder that it was going on his cork board and enclosed in a frame for Shin-chan's office.

"So. Are you thinking of broadening your practice?" He teased his partner as they both enjoyed a slice of birthday cake. "Maybe adding obstetrics to that sign outside your door?"

"If anything it's confirmed my suspicions that I prefer all my patients to be unconscious during their medical procedures," Shin-chan responded in all seriousness. "You wouldn't believe the death grip on that tiny woman."

"I'll bet," Takao laughed.

When the cake was gone, Kazunari offered their daughter a piggyback ride while Shin-chan picked up their son again, removing the scaled-down model of an occipital lobe from his mouth, before hoisting him up on his shoulders, ducking to clear the door frame.

The homemade card the children had presented to their father as a birthday present stuck out like a poorly crafted sore-thumb amongst Shin-chan's polished nicknacks. But Takao could tell by the way his husband had paused to look at it admiringly on his way out that as far as Midorima was concerned, it was a treasure amongst tchotchkes.

###

Kichiro clung to his father like a koala to a eucalyptus tree and given Shin-chan's coloring, it wasn't such a far fetched comparison. That is until grandpa lured him with a cookie. His loyalties weren't so set in stone that he wasn't amenable to a little food bribery.

"He takes his bottle at 7:00, oh and don't forget to test the temperature on your wrist. There are some extra bibs in here," Kazunari said as he placed an overstuffed messenger bag turned baby bag on the kitchen table in front of his mother who was now holding a snoozing Keiko-chan. The fact that one of the children had fallen asleep in their child seat on the car ride to Takao's parents made the transition a lot easier.

"Kazu, relax. You act like I didn't raise two kids of my own," she chided playfully. Her son had such an easy going personality that it was so rare to see him worked up like this. It was kind of endearing.

"Call me if there's anything I forgot and I'll --"

"Kazu, _please_. If there's anything you forgot, your father and I will make do with the things we have here. If not, there's a convenience store nearby. This isn't the first time we've watched the kids. Now go and enjoy your husband's birthday."

Stepping on her tipped toes, the goodnatured, kind woman kissed both stooping young men on the cheek before shooing them out of her house.

Midorima couldn't help the blush that creeped up on his cheeks. No matter how old he got, it was still embarrassing to have his in-laws allude to what he and Kazunari were so obviously going to go do when they got home.

###

Takao learned to cook when they had moved in together for university. At the time, it was more out of necessity than anything else. If he had left it up to the then frazzled future medical student, they would've either starved to death or died of severe food poisoning. Either way, the end result would've been the same. It was just as well, Midorima's hands were even more valuable now than they had been in high school. They were even insured and the last thing he needed was a kitchen accident cutting his brilliant career short.

He wouldn't go so far as to say that his cooking abilities rivaled Kagami's. Serin's shadow wouldn't shut up about the redhead's skills in the kitchen or in the bedroom, for that matter. For years Kuroko and Kazunari had been each other's sounding boards as they both navigated the sometimes murky, often turbulent waters of same-sex partnerhood. Still, there were times the hawkeye wished the Sixth Man didn't feel so comfortable opening up to him about his relationship with the cheeseburger-loving firefighter. Tetsuya was prone to over sharing during their tête-à-têtes especially if he had anything to drink and there were many details that Takao would love to forget -- like the fact that Taiga's _erm_ , well you know, was called "Tiger."

Kazunari had started out making simple meals -- like noodles -- ones his mom hand-wrote for him on index cards when he first moved out. He eschewed all the natto recipes of course because _someone_ had a picky palette. So hated were the fermented soybeans, that even to this day Takao was forbidden from making them at home even for himself -- at least not without lighting a Shinto shrine's worth of candles and airing the whole place out before a certain sharp-nosed doctor finished his shift at the hospital and even then it was a gamble -- because Shin-chan was like a bloodhound when it came to unpleasant odors.

Growing up, his mom was the kind that cooked in mass quantities on Sundays, so that during the week she could just heat up a pre-made, frozen meal when she got home from the office. His mom was a practical woman and one smart cookie. But Shin-chan was a prima donna, so there was no way Takao was going to get away with serving the same leftovers two nights in a row.

Kazunari's culinary skills had improved considerably over the years. So much so, that he was confident enough to prepare an elaborate, birthday dinner for Shin-chan.

He was engrossed in the kitchen while Midorima got out of his work clothes and showered.

On tonight's menu was a surf and turf combo of Kobe beef and shrimp (Takao had a tough time cooking lobster because of the whole boiling alive thing). He had finished preparing all the side dishes and had their induction cook top ready, but because the marbled steaks would take mere seconds to cook he was waiting for Shin-chan before throwing them in the hot pan.

Takao looked dumbstruck for a moment when Midorima walked into their kitchen. His husband seriously only got sexier with age.

He wore a simple button-down, a nerdy argyle sweater vest, a pair of dark slacks and a dinner jacket even though it was just the two of them. And he looked simply scrumptious. Only Shintarō could make tightly wound and poindexter look downright sinful. Or maybe it was just the way the hawkeye had always perceived him.

Takao's sharp eyes couldn't help but follow Shin-chan's hands -- the hands of a pianist, the hands of a surgeon -- as they reached for the glass of red wine Kazunari had poured for him earlier, it was from one of the few remaining bottles of the case they had brought home from their gorgeous vineyard nuptials. They were saving the last one for their upcoming seventh wedding anniversary.

Dinner was an absolute blur because no matter how much Shin-chan complemented him on the decadent meal Takao's mind was focused on the next part.

While Kazunari waited for Shintarō to finish his meal, he took note of the song playing in the background. Absentmindedly, he had popped into their stereo one of Midroima's CDs to set the mood. He knew Shin-chan liked to listen to classical music so he figured any one would do. This one, however, happened to be an American jazzy, bluesy number. The tune was one he'd heard Shin-chan play on the piano, but he'd never heard the words before.

The first line of the lyrics drew his attention to the splattering of stars across the night sky creating an oh so splendid backdrop outside the dining room's floor-to-ceiling windows and calling to mind the appropriateness of this day. It was, after all, still the seventh day of the seventh month. He thought of the unlucky cow herder and the weaver girl, star-crossed constellations, lovers who could only be together one night a year thanks to a disapproving father. He thought of their own struggles to remain together and felt overwhelming gratitude that things had turned out the way they had. That he and Shin-chan could be, were actually, together every night.

The minute Shintarō placed his folded napkin on the table, Takao was on his lap kissing him. Long forgotten was dessert -- the pastries he'd gone to all that trouble of picking up earlier -- as he traced his tongue around the familiar path Midorima's mouth with the expert precision that had come from years of practice, feeling Shin-chan react to his touch.

Shintarō didn't question the urgency in Takao's kisses, he merely reciprocated them. In the heated exchange that ensued between them, Takao lost his shirt and Midorima lost everything else so that all he was left with were his glasses and a pair of pawed at, rumpled trousers.

Kazunari was the first to standup and the birthday boy followed suit barely breaking contact. The hawkeye pulled both arms around Shin-chan's neck and as the taller man hoisted him up, the former point guard wrapped his legs around him allowing himself to be carried to their bedroom.

They had long out grown those heady days when they had to mark every room in the house. So even though they had the entire place to themselves, they had all night, and there was no chance of a child-sized interruption, they still retreated to private quarters. They had an enormous, king sized bed with a thoroughly researched, hotel quality mattress and Takao liked to use it.

They had also long ago left behind the awkward clumsiness of their first few encounters, their first few bumbling attempts at lovemaking. Though Shin-can still had a tiny scar on the inside of his lower lip -- proof that at one point, neither one of them knew what the hell they were doing. Sometimes when Takao sucked on Shin-chan's bottom lip or ran his tongue along that hidden little patch of raised tissue, he'd remember and laugh. Sometimes, when Midorima was worrying his own lower lip in concentration, he'd feel it and flush pink with embarrassment.

###

Takao liked to cling to Midorima in his sleep like a barnacle. At least that's how Shintarō would describe it. And though Shin-chan complained about it _a lot_ , he had actually grown fond of it over the years. So much so that he had truly missed his sleeping companion on the handful of nights they had been apart in their longstanding relationship.

For the first part of his life, Shintarō had slept on his back. That was, and would have remained, the case until he started sharing a bed with his former point guard. Despite Kazunari's smaller size, he somehow always managed to corral the much larger man in his sleep, so that Shin-chan would end up on his side, teetering on the edge of the bed with the hawkeye glued to his broad backside, leaving behind all that empty space behind them.

You'd think that given Midorima's 19 centimeters over Takao, their positions would be reversed, that Shintarō would obviously be the big spoon to Kazunari's little spoon. But sometime at the inception of their romantic relationship -- back when Shin-chan was too mortified to show any real outward affection -- Takao would glomp onto him and it sort of cemented itself that way. This wasn't to say that sometimes they didn't switch, because they did. But when they were both unconscious this was the natural order of things, this was how their bodies tended to align themselves around each other -- with Kazunari on the outside and Shintarō curled up in front of him.

Shintarō woke up every morning the way he had since they had moved in together, with the tops of Takao's ice cold feet pressing against his calves, his stiflingly warm, reliably aroused middle jabbing the small of his back, and a wet patch of drool he could feel between his shoulder blades. Even with all that he found that leaving their cozy love nest with hawkeye still snoozing in it was a Herculean task on most mornings.

Having children made sleeping in feel like a hedonistic luxury. It was only 8:30 in the morning, but Takao couldn't remember the last time he slept past 6:45. Midorima had it even worse. He had to be at the hospital making rounds before the sun even came up during the workweek. It was the only way he could make it home by dinnertime on most nights. And though he had left his caffeine-addled residency days behind him, he was still on call every third weekend of the month and sometimes pitched in when the hospital was short staffed.

Takao didn't brother setting an alarm clock anymore. He was convinced that in the old days before digital clocks people just used children to wake them up. His morning routine consisted of a pajama-clad Keiko-chan, sporting a serious case of bed head, running barefoot into their room to wake up papa. Papa, who was awake the minute he heard the door knob turn -- he had developed a sixth sense when it came to that clicking sound -- would pretend to be asleep as she climbed all over him whispering "Papa wake up" in an increasingly loud crescendo.

Then when she was least suspecting, he'd grab her by the foot and drag her under the covers with him. He would trap her there in his arms pretending to still be a sleep, with a big smile on his face as she wiggled and squirmed trying to get out. Because as far as Keiko-chan knew there was no worse fate than having to go back to sleep when she had a whole day of playing ahead of her. This would go on for a few minutes until they heard Kichiro on the baby monitor atop Takao's nightstand. Then, they would both go to the nursery as Takao retrieved his drowsy-eyed tot from his crib and got breakfast started.

Kazunari sleepily crawled over Midorima, intent on rekindling last night's activities. He got one smooch in, before the tsundere pushed him off their purposely low bed.

"Toothbrush, now," he commanded.

Morning breath had always been something Takao was willing to overlook for the sake of expediency, but Shintarō was not.

When they were both back in bed again, teeth now glistening in the morning light, they picked up where they had left off. Kazunari's hand ran the length of his husband, but the other man needed little encouragement and sometime later they were both on their backs catching their breaths.

Shin-chan stretched an arm beneath his pillow only to have the tips of his long fingers encounter a rubbery object. He hooked a finger through its plastic ring and pulled it out of its hiding place to examine it. It was one of Kichiro's plethora of binkies, no doubt left behind from yesterday's afternoon nap. Takao changed their sheets on an almost daily basis as the children slept on their bed during the day (but never at night, because otherwise they'd never get them out), so it couldn't have been left there much earlier than that.

"We should head out soon. I'm sure your parents have things to do today," he muttered, inspecting the small object in his large hand as if it were a long lost friend. Kazunari wasn't so easily fooled.

" _Awww_. Does Shin-chan miss our rugrats?"

They both knew Takao's parents had taken to becoming grandparents the way ducklings take to water, with gusto and an innate, natural ability. They wanted nothing more than to spoil their grandchildren and were in no hurry to have them picked up.

"Maybe a little." He admitted with a soft chuckle. "Even with you still here, our home seems _too_ quiet."

"Hey! I'm not _that_ loud."

"You're extremely noisy. They must take after you."

Shin-chan was in one of his rare playful moods and Takao thought he'd try his luck.

"It's still early. How about another go? I'll take the reigns this time?" Takao could count between his index finger and his pinky the number of times Midorima had let him 'take the reigns.'

". . ."

"C'mon Shin-chan, what so you say? I can tell you're thinking about it." He teased.

"I'll play you janken for it."

" _Uwah!_ Shin-chan's so mean." He whined, sounding a lot like Kise. "You know you always win."

Midorima chuckled quietly in that way of his that made his chest rumble, "Oh. Alright. If it means that much to you."

###

They had showered together and were both getting dressed in their large, walk-in closet when Takao remembered something very important.

"Wait here. I'll be right back," he told Shin-chan, leaving the green-haired man behind in a pair of glasses, black boxer briefs, and the bewildering thought of where Kazunari could possibly go wearing nothing but a pair of socks.

Moments later he returned, presenting Midorima with two round tins, both warm from being out in the early morning sun.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Open it," Takao encouraged unable to keep the grin off his face. "It's your birthday present. I meant to take them to your office yesterday, but they hadn't dried yet.

Midorima placed both metallic discs side by side on the island dresser in the center of the closet, next to an elegant silver tray which held a pair of Shintarō's cuff links, a tie clip, and a bottle of cologne. He removed the lids from each, one at a time.

Inside one of the tins was an imprint of a small, familiar hand in rose-colored clay. Inside the other was an even smaller handprint set in light blue.

"Kazunari, these are beautiful. Thank you," he said feeling the need to clear the emotion that had suddenly lodged itself his throat.

"Hey, Shintarō," Takao said in between kisses.

"Hmmm?"

"Thank you for being born."

" _Fool_ ," he grumbled, but there was no real bite to it. "You were supposed to say that yesterday."

"I guess I got carried away."

"Now put some clothes on," he ordered as he pulled down a dress shirt from its hanger. "I sincerely hope none of the boaters out on the bay this morning saw you _au naturel_ like this on the balcony."

"This view is only for you, Shin-chan," he said with a twinkling gleam that rivaled the stars.

* * *

**AN:** [Tanabata](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tanabata) fell on July 7th this year and celebrates the story of the Cow Herder and the Weaver Girl. The song Takao was listening to was "[Dream a Little Dream of Me](http://youtu.be/MBxvnadmJAU)" by Ella Fitzgerald and Louie Armstrong. The first line is "Stars shining bright above you // Night breezes seem to whisper, I love you." You can hear the piano version [here](http://youtu.be/C5YhxCgAcv8).

Like "Nobody Told Me," the title of this story (and of the series) is from a John Lennon song.


End file.
